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Tag: sound recording

This is a fascinating website dedicated to preserving the earliest audio recordings.

Contrary to the belief that Thomas Edison invented sound recording in the 1870s, the first sound recordings were made between 1853-1860 by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in Paris (it is likely that Edison was unaware of Scott de Martinville’s work, indicating that Edison did, in a sense, invent something that had been invented separately 20 years earlier).

FirstSounds.org describes Scott de Martinville’s recordings as the first airborne recorded sounds, differentiating them from other recording technologies such as the player piano and music box. Granted, there is no particular artistry in these recordings – they consist of someone humming “Claire de Lune” and a major scale – but there is great historical significance in that they are the first audio recordings.read more

This is the audio collection of the Internet Wayback Machine, the primary internet archive of the internet. This is all free audio, ranging from early recordings of Enrico Caruso to field recordings of Mississippi John Hurt to recordings of Wagner operas and Louis Armstrong’s cornet. This is a great resource for music heads.

This is a very interesting documentary about the fine details musicians, producers, engineers, and instrument makers put into music. I wouldn’t classify myself as an audiophile, but I do care about the sound.

Despite the resolution of the sound, though, some music still connects with me possibly because of the lo-fi quality of the recording. Lo-fi sometimes sounds to me like a more realistic portrayal of what the music sounds like. I constantly tweak my guitar to fit the characteristics of the space I am playing in, but I’m fully aware that what I hear is not what a listener hears. A listener is constantly battling with acoustics, and to a certain extent this adds depth to the music.read more